Quake jolts Taiwan; 5 dead, 1 Pinoy missing
HUALIEN, Taiwan — Rescue workers pulled survivors and bodies from buildings tilting precariously in the Taiwanese city of Hualien Wednesday, after an overnight earthquake killed at least five, injured more than 200 and left dozens missing. Emergency responders were focusing on a 12-story apartment block and a nearby hotel, both of which were leaning dangerously after their lower floors pancaked when the 6.4-magnitude quake hit the popular tourist city late Tuesday.
In an afternoon update, the national fire agency said at least five people had been killed and 247 injured across the city. But the toll could rise as rescuers discovered more bodies.
There were grave concerns for the bad-
ly leaning Yun Tsui residential building, which also housed a restaurant, shops and a hostel.
1 Filipina missing Meanwhile, the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) on Wednesday confirmed that a Filipina caretaker working in the area is missing.
MECO Chair Lito Banayo said they have already sent a team led by labor attaché Cesar Chaves, who is currently in Hualien, to personally check the condition of Filipinos working in the area.
“Initial onsite report is that there’s a Filipina caretaker missing in one of the buildings there,” Banayo said in a television interview yesterday morning.
In a separate interview, Banayo said they are in the process of communicating with the missing Filipina worker’s family in the Philippines to apprise them of the situation.
He said it may also be possible that the said OFW went directly to the hospital if in case she suffered a minor injury.
“Kaya ‘yung team naman natin ng MECO ay nagpupunta rin sa mga ospital para mai-check kung sino mang Pilipino ang nandodoon (That’s why our team went to the hospitals to check if there are Pilipinos confined there),” the MECO official said.
Banayo added they are checking other hospitals in the area to verify if there are Filipinos affected by the 6.4 magnitude tremor that hit the eastern coast of Taiwan shortly before midnight on Tuesday.
“So far wala namang namatay (So far, there were no reported deaths),” the MECO chief said. MECO is the “de facto” embassy of the Philippines in Taiwan.
There are currently about 150,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Taiwan, many of them employed in the manufacturing sector and as household service workers. Rescuers scour toppled buildings
The Taiwan fire agency said 88 people were unaccounted for as of 2 p.m. (0600 GMT) but it was not immediately clear how many of those were trapped inside buildings, reports said.
Dozens of residents – and a pug dog – were rescued with ropes and ladders from the Yun Tsui apartment block overnight. But fire department staff at the site told AFP at least four bodies had been pulled out of the building.
‘Sink into the ground’ One local resident who lives nearby told AFP how he watched the tower block partially collapse.
“I saw the first floor sink into the ground. Then it sank and tilted further and the fourth floor became the first floor,” said Lu Chih-son, 35, who saw 20 people rescued from the building.
Chen Chih-wei, 80, said he was sleeping in his apartment on the top floor of the building when the quake struck.
“My bed turned completely vertical. I was sleeping and suddenly I was standing,” he told AFP.
He said he managed to crawl his way to a balcony to wait for rescue, adding that the quake was the strongest he had felt in more than five decades of living in Hualien.
Cranes prop up building
Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen visited the apartment block Wednesday morning.
“Now is the prime time for our rescue efforts, our first priority is to save people,” she said in a Facebook post.
Four mobile cranes had been brought in on the back of trucks to help prop up the structure, an AFP reporter on the scene said.
Tourist hub
Hualien is one of Taiwan’s most popular tourist hubs as it lies on the picturesque east coast rail line and near the popular Taroko Gorge.
The foreign ministry said 17 foreigners sought medical treatment for minor injuries.
Local resident Blue Hsu said some of those carried out of the hotel were foreigners.
“The lower floors sunk into the ground and I saw panicked tourists being rescued from the hotel,” eyewitness Blue Hsu told AFP.
Officials also said 214 people had been injured in the quake, with 117 people rescued from damaged buildings so far. Some 830 people were in shelters while 1,900 houses were without power.
Quake anniversary
The quake hit just before midnight (1550 GMT) around 21 kilometers north- east of Hualien, according to the United States Geological Survey.
It followed almost 100 smaller tremors to have hit the area in the last three days and comes exactly two years since a quake of the same magnitude struck the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, killing more than 100 people.
Most of the deaths from the February 2016 earthquake were from the 16-storey Wei-kuan apartment complex, which toppled on its side and buried many residents in the rubble.
It was the only high-rise in Tainan to crumble completely in that quake.
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
The island’s worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6-magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed around 2,400 people.